October 17, 2007

Facebook Google Reader App Rebrands As Feedheads

One of the more useful Facebook applications out there, enabling you to integrate your Google Reader shared items with your Facebook profile, and view most frequently shared items, has recently, quietly, undergone a rebranding, to "Feedheads".

While the application's author, Mario Romero, hasn't said anything about the change, it's possible that he made the change to avoid confusing people into thinking the application was produced, or endorsed, by Google. Another possible reason for the change? It now appears that Mario has added the option to include shared items from NewsGator, in addition to Google Reader.

Previously labeled as a "Google Reader" application, the application changed names sometime in the afternoon on Sunday, October 14th, to "Feedheads". You can see the change transparently occur on the right in a screenshot from my Facebook mini-feed.

6 comments:

Hi Louis, first of all thx!, the name change as you correctly guessed is due to the newsgator support. :) I hope other feed readers start incorporating a similar sharing feature with their products to support them as well.

I guess it depends on what's considered useful. I'd argue that many I've seen, like SuperPoke, either extend Facebook's already-existing capabilities, or others, like Vampires, and "throwing a beer" at someone, for example, are just toys. If I watch my Feed from friends and others, I see a lot of app usage that doesn't help communicate, accelerate or enable business, and share information.

I don't claim to be "the" Facebook app expert. Just not enough free time. But Feedheads is one I'm glad I installed, and hearing of it was one of the main reasons I even considered signing up for Facebook in the first place.

Louis, thanks. Again, I don't mean to question the value of Feedheads to you or other potential users. I am just interested in the value to you, especially in light of your dismissal of so many apps (with which for the most part I agree).

Actually I'm writing a book on using Facebook for business purposes, personal or employer business, and looking for innovative applications to include.

If you or Mario are interested in discussing this further, via email or phone, that would be terrific. My email is bill at /my username/ dot com.

I do not see how useful it is. I could not use my shared google reader URL because I do not have any shared items. It seems I would have to first read them in the reader and click on the link to share them.